


Johnny and the Quarter-Life Crisis

by lurrel



Category: Johnny Maxwell - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurrel/pseuds/lurrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble with reunions was they always made you miss all the things that weren't happening any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Johnny and the Quarter-Life Crisis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [busaikko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/gifts).



> Thanks to the lovely Yuletide mods and my gorgeous beta, abuseofreason.

**1995:**  
The Internet was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to Wobbler Johnson. Not only did it make his longtime hobby of destroying copyright protections even more fun and interactive, it let him talk to nerds who hadn’t already kicked him out of their club.

Pipex and CompuServe opened a whole new world for Wobbler, and he became an internet legend.

Well, at least in Blackbury.

Johnny Maxwell got a Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM for his 15th birthday. He supposed it was easier to use than his grandad’s encyclopedias.

-  
 **1997:**  
When Johnny Maxwell finally got dial-up Internet in his grandfather’s house, he was 17 and looking at universities. He had his whole life ahead of him, he’d been told over and over again, and it was apparently time for him to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of it.

He couldn’t deny the lurking anxiety in his gut when he thought about moving away from Blackbury, the only placed he’d ever lived. He and his mother had never ever taken a holiday, and his father always talked about going on trips but would then mysteriously forget as soon as summer vacation started.

Even so, Johnny’s friends were near and dear to him, and they seemed to have everything figured out. Wobbler had bombarded him with links over Instant Messenger of different computer science programs around the world, Yo-less was trying to decide which school was the best jump-off point for medical school, and Kristy was trying to narrow her choices down to particle physics or ancient European history or maybe something else.

Bigmac, at least, seemed unsure about his continued desire to enlist, but they’d all grown enough in the past years that it wasn’t nearly as laughable as before.

None of them seemed likely to be anywhere near where Johnny would end up, and Johnny didn’t even know where he was going to end up. His goal was: not Blackbury, because his mother looked grim as she chain-smoked in the kitchen and his grandfather did nothing but watch television, and they’d never really tried to leave.

-

So Johnny fretted. He fretted online to Wobbler, to Kristy (whose parents let her keep her computer with internet in her room, with her own phoneline), to Yo-less when he was in the library. He fretted at Bigmac in person until Bigmac dragged him to the pub in the Joshua N’Clements block and got him smashed.

It didn’t help, really. 

What _did_ help was an offer of a scholarship from the University of Birmingham. Johnny sighed with relief because, once again, the universe had made a decision for him.

-  
 **2005:**  
Sometimes Johnny missed the simplicity of his Encarta CD-ROMs when he had to research at work. Having just one place to look kept him from feeling anxious about what source was the most definitive.

He had to remind himself often that he was just writing sales copy and not anything people were going to pay attention to, and that seemed to help.

Johnny ate lunch every day in Greenwich Park, which was expansive enough that he never quite felt bored by it. He’d moved to London after university, took a copywriting job, rented a small loft, and generally felt like he was constantly waiting for the next stage of his life to begin.

He was still in touch with the gang from Blackbury, though he’d managed to move closer to them in London than he had been in Birmingham. Wobbler and Yo-less hadn’t moved post-grad, so their trifecta kept close, and he saw them fairly regularly. Not _too_ regularly, of course -- their friends from university were still kicking around the city as well.

Johnny had his own other friends, too, of course. He was a good listener, so he made friends pretty easily. It was a talent Kristy made fun of him for, since he always had a problem he was trying to solve for someone else. He told her it was a good way to keep himself distracted since he didn’t really have any hobbies, and she’d laughed at that as well. Well, she’d at least typed LOL.

Johnny was never sure how sincere people were being on Instant Messenger.

Wobbler, now going by Steve, was getting ready to throw quite a big birthday bash for his 25th. It was good timing, too -- Kristy was going to be in the city to present a paper at King’s College, where Yo-less was currently attending med school. Even Bigmac, sometimes Simon but more often Wrigley, was coming into town from somewhere. Johnny never had a good handle on what he was doing after he’d been discharged (honourably, even) from the Army. Construction? Security work? Bartending? It wasn’t stealing cars, though, so he couldn’t be too concerned.

Kristy insisted that they meet up before Wobbler’s party so they could catch up, which really meant she was planning on leaving the party so she wouldn’t be tired the next day. Her thesis work often meant that she created all sorts of plans to be responsible, but Johnny had yet to see the ‘leave the party early’ plan ever be enacted. Still, some time away from Wobbler’s other friends wouldn’t be horrible.

She’d emailed out that they were to meet up at a place called The Gipsy Moth, so Johnny sidled up around fifteen minutes early. There was that kind of idle chatter that fills in the air in every similar restaurant-slash-bar, and he waited around, getting lost in someone recounting losing their cell phone, someone talking about how creepy their boss was. Normal stuff, really.

Kristy practically tackled him when she got there, grinning widely. Her hair was pulled back and she wasn’t wearing any make-up, and Johnny could only grin helplessly back. He hadn’t seen her for about two years, since her parents took a holiday last Christmas and ended up on a tropical island.

-

“Have you guys heard of Facebook?” Wobbler sounded angry about it, whatever it was. They were one round in, waiting for some fried bar food to come out.

Kristy nodded. “Yeah, a couple of my students have got one. I don’t really see the point -- why would you want to put all that stuff about yourself online?”

“What is it?” asked Yo-less, who barely had time to eat, let alone be online. Wobbler had told Johnny once that it was weird how Yo-less called him, and wanted to hang out _in person_ more than they chatted.

“It’s just...” Wobbler sort of waved his hand. “It’s stupid, is what. It’s a site where you can add your friends. The real lesson is that I’m worth like ten Mark Zuckerbergs.”

“I...I’ll keep that in mind,” Yo-less said politely.

“Where’s Fatimah?” Kristy asked, stopping that rant before it grew even more incomprehensible.

Yo-less was, maybe unsurprisingly, the luckiest of the Gang in love. Johnny wouldn’t have predicted it himself, back in school, but Yo-less could dress himself without the aid of funny t-shirts and was currently in medical school. He was, as they say, a catch, and he got caught by a girl named Fatimah. She was two inches taller than him, from Sudan, had a penchant for brightly colored fingernails and gold jewelry, and was the coolest person any of them ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Fatimah enjoyed taking Johnny and Wobbler out to clubs and laughing, mostly. Everyone was besotted with her, and Johnny was fairly sure they were going to get married and everyone at the wedding would be a better dancer than Yo-less.

“Oh, she insisted that she didn’t want to intrude,” he said. “Figured this was a reunion of sorts.”

“But we love Fatimah!” Kristy said, and Yo-less said, “Yeah, but what if something weird--” and Wobblers elbowed him, cutting him off.

“Look, it’s fine. We’ll see her tonight, yeah?”

Yo-less nodded.

“Alright, then where’s Simon?” Kristy asked

“Simon?” asked Wobbler, who was moving into his third glass of ale.

“Bigmac, obviously,” said Johnny, though Bigmac seemed like a character so far removed from Simon Wrigley’s current person that the name felt wrong to say.

“Oh, he’s always late,” Wobbler said. “It’s kind of amazing he’s kept his job in construction.”

“I thought he was a bartender,” said Yo-less.

“I thought he was a...wasn’t he going to be a hairstylist?” Kristy looked even more unsure than she sounded.

“No, that was Skazza. He’s pretty good at it, too,” Johnny said. It was true -- Skazza, one of Blackbury’s three skinheads, was not bad at haircutting, despite the state of his own.

“You’re joking,” Wobbler said, hitting the table for emphasis. “That’s the wrongest thing anyone’s ever said.”

“I can think of wronger things,” said Johnny.

“Bigmac’s first car,” Yo-less said.

“The fact that Tony Blair’s been re-elected,” Kristy added.

A voice sounded from beside the table, in the bar’s shadows. “That time Yo-less tried to grow his hair out.”

“I think we have a winner!” declared Wobbler, and Johnny stood up in time to be crushed half to death by Bigmac’s hug.

“Bigmac!” Yo-less cried, grinning. More hugs and handshakes were exchanged until the table settled again, a pint mysteriously in Bigmac’s hand and absent from the space in front of Wobbler.

“You know I’ve never actually heard anyone call you by your real first name,” said Kristy as she finished off her second pint. “I forget sometimes that it’s not your legal name, Yo-less.” 

“I mean, it could be,” said Bigmac. “He could have gotten it changed. Maybe all his IDs read 'Yo-less Allenye.'"

“Even Fatimah just calls you ‘babe’ or something.”

“Would you rather she call me Mr. Allenye?” asked Yo-less.

Kristy’s ears turned pink because this was the preferred method of address from her last boyfriend -- Miss His-Last-Name. Johnny never liked him.

“At least I’m not Bigmac anymore.”

“Yeah, it’s great that you’ve changed to the stately and dignified ‘Simon’ now that you’ve grown,” said Johnny, grinning. 

“I don’t see why I’m still Wobbler. No one but you lot call me that, anyway.”

“It’s true, you don’t Wobble nearly as much,” Johnny said. It _was_ true -- Wobbler hit a growth spurt which changed him from a fat kid to a large man. He’d never be skinny, and he still couldn’t run worth a damn, but mostly his body stayed constrained by space and time and suited him well enough. He had a presence about him that was really undercut by the nickname.

“I expect you’d have to use your real name if you got a Facebook,” Wobbler said thoughtfully. “Maybe I could build something that let you have a pseudonym and add friends.”

“It’s called MySpace,” Kristy said. “I wouldn’t recommend it. The students are way keener on Facebook.”

“I still don’t understand how an online phonebook is going to make money!” 

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the first step. Collect all that information for something else.”

“Oh, now that makes it sound sinister,” said Simon, who was finishing off Yo-less’ drink. “Anyway, I haven’t seen you in a long while. What have you been up to, Johnny?”

He shrugged. “Nothing special, really.”

Kristy rolled her eyes. “Typical.”

“Been thinking about getting my teacher’s certificate. I don’t really love copywriting.”

“It’s not really a career, is it?” Kristy didn’t bother to sound sincere.

“Hey, now, maybe Johnny can move up the copy-writing ladder.” 

“I’m not really sure what the crowning achievement of copywriting would be,” Johnny said. 

There was a pause as everyone tried to work it out.

“I expect it’s still not very exciting,” he said.

“Johnny, you always pretend like you’re the most mundane person on the planet,” said Simon Wrigley as he hit Johnny on the back with a broad hand. “But we know better. I have to know what you’re up to now.”

Johnny finished swallowing the last swig of beer left in his glass. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bigmac chewed a handful of Wobbler’s chips and just looked at him expectantly, and the rest of the table followed suit.

“I’m serious, you guys. What, you don’t think we can go out for drinks just like normal folks without something out of the ordinary happening?”

This pause stretched out even longer than the first. Wobbler has spent the time he didn’t devote to programming working on lifting one eyebrow independently from the other, and he practiced the look out on Johnny now.

Johnny sighed, looking into his pint. He’d been hoping for maybe a mundane reunion, where everyone is slightly uncomfortable at first but then is sad to leave. “Fine. Fine! But it’s a small thing, really. Nothing adventurous at all.”

-

After settling the bill, Johnny took the slightly swaying group out to Greenwich Park. He felt loose-limbed; he'd never learned to handle alcohol well, unlike Kristy, who could drink everyone but Bigmac under the table. Even Wobbler had grown out of drinking shitty alcho-pops and had moved on to pretending to be a connoisseur of brandy, which had actually managed to get him a few dates so it was almost worth being seen as an insufferable knob.

He ambled to the side til they were in a copse of trees near a road.

“So,” Johnny said, glancing at them. “What do you see?”

“A tree,” Yo-less said, after a long pause. “A few of them, in fact.”

“This part feels familiar,” Simon said, grinning. “The part where nothing actually happens.” He had a flask in his hand, which Johnny counted as point towards him being a bartender.

Johnny crouched down, and everyone pressed in to peer over him. The light was fading in the sky, but there was still enough light to see what Johnny wanted them to.

“A door. We’re looking at a tiny door?” This was Kristy, who was leaning on his shoulder. She smelled nice, like something sweet and girlish. It was a strange thing to associate with a woman who he’d seen break at least two different noses.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I see it now,” said Wobbler, as he adjusted his glasses. The gang cast a heavy shadow over the roots of the tree, which had, as stated, a door nestled into it.

It looked like a tiny shop door -- glass with papers taped to it and then papers taped over those papers, a shop schedule in peeling plastic stickers, all about 13 centimeters high.

“I think they belong to some kind of small, magic creature? Maybe fairies,” Johnny said.

Kristy sighed and pushed off him, standing straight and being backlit by the sun. “This is ridiculous,” she said, and that was familiar, too. “Faeries live in mounds, not trees.” 

“That’s in Ireland. And those are _sidhe_ , not just run of the mill fairies.” 

“Faeries.” Kristy said, the spelling obvious in her tone. “How do you even know that?”

“I know how to use Wikipedia,” Johnny said defensively. “Anyway, fairies like hawthorne trees, and this one is right near one of those.”

Yo-less frowned. “This could be a prank, you know.”

“Or some art students,” said Simon. He had a History with art students.

“But sometimes they open,” Johnny said. “And one over there just went out of business.”

“What?” This was Wobbler, who had gotten up from his crouch and was glancing around the park.

“It closed shop.”

“What do fairies even sell?” asked Kristy.

“Tiny pewter statues of humans,” said Yo-less.

“Feathers to tickle babies,” said Wobbler.

“Babies,” finished Bigmac.

Johnny shrugged. “You asked. I found them while eating lunch out here one day.”

“It’s a pretty small adventure,” Bigmac said. “But it is pretty worrisome. I wonder why they’re leaving.”

“I haven’t found one to ask,” said Johnny, shrugging again.

“I think we should shelve this mystery for a night that isn’t my birthday,” said Wobbler, and he herded them out of the park.

-

Kristy wasn’t staying on Johnny’s couch, but she might as well have been. Yo-less and Wobbler retreated to their respective flats, and Simon was bunking down with Johnny.

Kristy followed them, talking about the fairy conundrum at first but falling into talking to Simon about a holiday where they’d met up.

“I didn’t know you two kept close,” Johnny said, pulling the futon open so Bigmac had a place to crash.

“Well, I didn’t have chat or anything, but Kristy here wrote me letters when I was overseas.”

“Ah.” And wasn’t that a Kristy-like thing to do, Johnny thought. Writing actual letters. Johnny didn’t even think he’d seen a postage stamp in his life aside from the useless ones that accumulated in drawers in his grandad’s --

Anyway, of course.

“That’s nice of you,” Johnny said.

Kristy shrugged. “I needed a hobby that wasn’t beating the shit out of people.”

“Did everyone quit the judo club again?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said, scowling, and Simon laughed.

“Do you want me to walk you to your hotel?” Johnny offered, and Kristy waved him off with a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll be fine, but I’ll see you tomorrow at the pub, yeah?”

The night had been such a success that everyone agreed to try to squeeze in one more like it, even if it was a Sunday.

-

The trouble with reunions, Johnny thought, was that they made you feel things like nostalgia. He missed his friends, standing around and shooting the shit and harassing mall employees. Even though he couldn’t really look back and call any part of his road to young adulthood where he felt particularly happy, he had to have been more content then he felt now.

Right?

-

They were back in the park, drunker than before. Kristy’s cheeks were rosy and Simon had his arm slung around her shoulders. Fatimah had come but begged off, telling them she had no stomach for adventures. However, Yo-less managed to ignore homework for another three hours and Wobbler was never one to miss a party.

Johnny took a deep breath and crouched down. His friends buoyed his courage to do something he hadn’t thought to do before.

He knocked.

There was a noise like any other shop bell, only 25 times smaller, as the door creaked open.

A tiny man with wings stood there and squinted at Johnny. He was wearing green and had shoes with pointed toes.

Johnny swallowed.

“‘Ello?” asked the fairy. “Dropped a contact? Got a baby need kidnapping?”

He could _feel_ his friends hold their breath.

“Er,” Johnny started. “Well. Um.”

“Spit it out.”

“I was wondering why your shops were closing up.”

The man peered up at him. He didn’t have a beard and his skin was a bit greenish. His wings fluttered and were hard to look at directly. He heard Kristy, probably, fumble with what could have been a camera.

“The church down the road, Our Lady and Star of the Sea?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, some of the folk like bells, and some of them don’t. Us round here, like the bells. But the church is ringing them with some kind of electromagnetic technology. It doesn’t sound right anymore. We’re relocating.”

“Ah.”

“That, and the internet service around here is slow as dirt.”

“I see.”

“Is that all?”

“Um,” said Johnny, and the man shut his door. 

“Um,” he said again as he stood up, shaking grass off his knees.

“That...was a pretty non-adventurous adventure,” said Yo-less, staring at the tiny shop door. There was a pause, because he’d basically summed up everything anyone had to say about it.

“Yeah. Fairies just seem kind of stuffy. Terrible neighbors if this is the kind of thing that gets them all to move out.” Simon scratched his chin.

“I was hoping for time travel, honestly,” said Wobbler, and Kristy and Johnny exchanged glances. “But fairies could be a total untapped market for internet service.”

“So,” said Simon, who was now holding Kristy’s hand. “To another pub?”

-

Kristy showed up at the park the next day as Johnny was eating his sandwich. He hadn’t seen her or Simon when he left the bar the night before, but the headache he’d had was still there with him, keeping him company.

“Johnny, I worry about you,” she said, sitting down on the bench next to him.

Johnny couldn’t help the arched eyebrow he gave her. “Is this an intervention?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not just me.”

“Are the others staging an intervention right now? Is that what I’ve got coming to me when I get home?”

“Ha ha, no. But we’ve talked about you a bit. You can’t keep waiting around, Johnny.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“What were you hoping the fairy doors were going to do?”

He paused, because stuff like _give my life a meaning as I solved their problem_ sounded terrible even in his head. “Shake things up a bit, I guess.”

“You’re waiting for something.”

Johnny took a bite of his sandwich and thought about this.

“Maybe.”

“You’re not very perceptive for a boy who sees ghosts,” Kristy said, and there wasn’t really much to say to that.

-

The next day Wobbler sent him an email about teacher’s college.

Yo-less followed up with some questions about what subject he was thinking of.

“I hope not maths,” he said on the phone, because he was the last person on earth who still made phone calls. “You were always hopeless at maths.”

Kristy was behind this, Johnny figured, but that didn’t mean he should ignore it. Kristy was normally right, except for all the times she wasn’t. 

He looked at teacher’s colleges and watched the fairies pack up and leave. It was less troubling than he’d suspected it would be.

The trouble with reunions was that they made him feel like he was missing something when they weren’t happening. He could still go out to the pub with people, sure, but how many of them would stand around in a graveyard just because he asked? How many had accidentally woken up in one of his dreams?

Bigmac showed up at his flat a month later with some beers and a hickey and a problem to solve that didn’t involve a single supernatural anything, and Johnny thought that maybe things were still happening even when they weren’t all in a park together and he’d missed it somehow. 

“You think too much about what you should be doing, mate,” Bigmac said to him that night. “What about what you’re doing now?”

“What _am_ I doing now?” Johnny ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t need to get drunk to get existential but it always helped with Bigmac (it didn’t with Wobbler). They’d started on vodka and were now ending with vodka.

“You’ve got a good job and some good friends. You’re probably overthinking it.”

“Everyone seems so put together. Wobbler’s going to...he’s going to be an internet mogul or something, you know? Yo-less is gonna get married and be a doctor and probably have genius children. Kristy’s going to be a PhD and then probably Prime Minister.”

Bigmac laughed. “And me?”

“You never seem confused about what you’re doing,” Johnny said. “Even if none of us know what that is.”

“I’m a bartender,” he said, and Johnny pumped his fist. 

“I knew it! Kristy thought you were a hairstylist or something.”

Bigmac laughed again. “Kristy suggested it as a career move when I introduced her to a boyfriend.”

Johnny laughed, but then stopped and squinted at Simon. They were both on the futon and Johnny could feel the alcohol flush he had in his cheeks.

“Oh. Oh!” Johnny took another shot and then sat up to frown down at him. “I’ve never got to meet your boyfriend.”

Simon laughed and shut his eyes, head cradled in his hands as they stretched behind him. “Well he wasn’t serious. It wasn’t, even. But I’m serious about you, man -- we worry that you’re, uh. 'Directionless' is how she put it but I’d say more unhappy.”

“I’m not,” Johnny said, settling back on the futon. “I’m pretty sure I’m not. I’m just not...happy.”

“You should worry less.”

“Okay,” said Johnny.

“We’re here for you, man. Don’t think they’re leaving you behind.”

Johnny, even as he was falling asleep, felt that this was probably true, and found it was still true the next morning.


End file.
